


love the very blood of you

by soldierwitch



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22056292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierwitch/pseuds/soldierwitch
Summary: What is faith but a word? Something to cling to when all else is gone? And if it is just a word where does that leave us? Where does that leave our prayers? Sitting in the pew with us? Does it even matter? If there's something greater who says it's God? And if it is Him, does He sit with us in quiet moments? Is it Him I feel when we're together? Is it us? Is it both? How is it that we have all the questions, and so little of the answers? And is it wrong that I look to you when I am lost? Is it wrong? Because it doesn't feel wrong.Agnostic woman of science!Liz & agnostic alien healer priest!Max AU
Relationships: Max Evans/Liz Ortecho
Comments: 9
Kudos: 17





	love the very blood of you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wunderlass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wunderlass/gifts).



> This is a labor of love. It is also blasphemous. If that is not your dish please turn back now because it's what I'm serving up. You have Mo to thank for this. She has been with me every step of the way with this fic, and we're so excited to present this to you LaTessitrice for the New Year's Gift Exchange. So, without further ado, we give you our agnostics and their struggle with faith as we ring in the new year with some gentle kink for Michelle.
> 
>  **Added** : viaomens made [a beautiful poster](https://viaomens.tumblr.com/post/615248963421011968/love-the-very-blood-of-you-echo-poster-new) for this fic. Go show her some love, y'all, because it's so gorgeous as is everything she creates. Thanks again, Eva!

Rosa relapses on a Monday, but Liz doesn't find out her sister has been popping pills until she finds her in their shared apartment Wednesday night. She overdosed.

The 911 call is frantic. Panic wracks through her words, a sob of 'hurry' trembles through the line. The red and blue flash of ambulance lights, the siren, the shrill announcement of what has happened is a wake up call to the street. Liz barely hears the whispers and the concerned murmurs; her sister is being led out on a stretcher.

There is no room for Liz in the ambulance. One of the EMTs slows down long enough to tell her which hospital they're going to. Her tone is bland, professional, she has seen enough crying family members to place a wall between herself and them. Liz wishes she could erect her own walls. She believed...maybe this time...but Rosa...this is her second relapse and her third overdose.

Liz drives to the hospital with shaky hands and thinks,  _ this will teach me to have faith when I know better. _

\---

The doctors stabilize Rosa. Liz chooses not to call their father. She will keep the peace of this night for him; she'll carry the burden of a shattered hope.

A nurse with a five o'clock shadow and a cross necklace informs her the chapel is on the third floor if she'd like to pray. It's meant to be a kindness, but it doesn't feel kind. It feels like an assumption. Liz doesn't know how to respond, but it doesn't matter. The nurse's attention turns away from her, his smile twists out of its sympathy and grows wide in delight.

"Father Evans," he says, sitting up straighter. "What are you doing here this late?"

Liz feels a presence behind her, but she only turns when the man steps to her side. He is tall, his black clothing a stark contrast in the white hospital lighting, and he is handsome. Handsome and young.

"Luisa Mayberry," he says, voice like the rumble of thunder.

The nurse's smile drops. "She hasn't been doing well."

"So I've heard."

"Are you here to," he trails off, glancing at Liz and then back to Father Evans.

Father Evans looks at her, too, from the corner of his eye. Liz swears she hears his breath catch, but then he's nodding at the nurse and telling him he'll see what he can do before heading down the hallway. A patch of black surrounded by white.

Curious, Liz turns to ask the nurse about the father, but he's gone.

\---

Liz paces in the waiting room. She'd been granted permission to see her sister, but she couldn't cross over the threshold of the doorway. She didn't want to see her. Not in a hospital bed, again. Not with an IV in her arm, again.

The magazines on the table aren't enough of a distraction. Neither are the medical pamphlets nor the posters on the wall. Finally, she gives in and takes the elevator to the chapel.

When there is nothing left to do, Liz prays. Reason has lost its fight with her sister. As has logic. There is a brokenness in her that neither of them can fix. So she sits in the pew and bows her head. She talks to God, and she makes a wish like a child blowing out a candle.

Liz recognizes that this is not faith, that it is desperation. She invokes His name, and she begs, and she hates herself for prostrating herself without true belief. But there is nothing left to do, nothing left but this.

The door creaks open. She wipes her tears.

"I'm sorry," she hears behind her. "I thought the chapel would be empty."

"It's fine," Liz says, watching as Father Evans walks to her side and then walks in front of her, briefly obscuring the cross on the wall, before he takes a seat next to her.

"Is Luisa going to be okay," Liz asks for something to say. Something to fill the silence. She's tired of hearing her own voice. It's been an hour, and it's just been her and her prayers with no answering voice to comfort her. There never is.

"Yes. It is God's will," Father Evans says, eyes trained on the cross.

Liz looks at him. He looks tired. A frown tugs at his lips. Father Evans doesn't look like a man who has a lot of faith in that statement and yet when she asks him how he knows, he says, "I have faith," with a strong conviction.

"That makes one of us," Liz says and turns to look at the cross as well.

"You don't have faith?"

"I lost my faith a long time ago," she admits. The statement is raw in its honesty. Liz regrets it the moment it leaves her mouth.

Father Evans' eyes sweep away from the cross to her. His gaze is heavy. Liz feels like a weight has settled around her shoulders, but it's not suffocating. It feels like a presence, like something has entered the room.

She finds herself whispering, "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," as if the chapel is a confessional.

"And what are your sins?"

Liz shifts in her seat and then turns to face him. "I have asked for the strength to walk away."

"From God?"

She looks down. "From what's destroying me," Liz says. Whether it's God. Whether it's Rosa. She is losing ground. The world is crumbling around her.

Father Evans leans close. He is warmer than he has any right to be in this cold chapel. "You are absolved," he says. He names no prayers for her to recite, no tasks that she must do to prove her contrition; he simply washes her of the sin.

Liz raises her head. She feels enveloped, and strangely, safe. "How can I be absolved if I am not sorry?"

"Do you wish to be sorry?"

She doesn't know, so she doesn't answer.

Father Evans places his hand over Liz's. Her breath hitches. He appears not to have noticed, and Liz thinks maybe small miracles do exist.

He makes the sign of the cross and bows his head. His muttering is so low that Liz isn't sure what he's saying, and then he removes his hand. Her skin tingles.

"Do you believe in renewal," Father Evans asks, quietly.

"I believe in things ending," she replies just as quiet.

"Then this too shall pass," he says and stands. "Goodnight."

"Liz."

"What?"

"My name is Liz," she says, standing, too. "Liz Ortecho."

"Goodnight, Ms. Ortecho," Father Evans says. He leaves with a small smile, and it's not until the door closes that Liz realizes she introduced herself in the hopes he'd shake her hand. She wanted to feel the comfort of his one last time.

\---

Liz checks her phone and shivers. Fall is crawling toward winter. She should have brought her gloves.

Sipping from her coffee cup, Liz leans against the hard stone of the church. Rosa has twenty minutes left in her AA meeting. It's her first since she was hospitalized a week and a half ago.

She could have waited in the car, but she hasn't been able to listen to music since she found her sister. Their favorite record had been spinning. She still hears the groove of the bass line and the ecstatic shrieking of the lead singer. A joyful, noisy chaos with her sister at its heart.

Now that enough time has passed, Liz has found the anger that used to sit in her throat just waiting for her sister to prove her right. She has pushed it down into her belly and let it sit there like a rock. She is not ready to let it go.

Liz looks up when she hears footsteps.

Father Evans is walking toward her. His head is down. He's in a leather jacket. An earthy clash to his clerical black with the exception to the collar that acknowledges that he is God's. It should be incongruous but it fits him somehow.

The thought takes Liz by surprise. They had one conversation in the midst of her grief. She knows him no more than she does the last priest she spoke to almost three years ago.

When he looks up, his eyes find the church doors first. He sighs.

Liz has never seen a man of the cloth look at a church with such weariness. There's reluctance on his face as if he wishes to be anywhere else.

She steps forward, drawing attention to herself. He stops walking when he sees her.

"Ms. Ortecho," he says, a soft shock in his voice.

Liz tries not to let his remembrance of her name be more than a nice acknowledgement of the short time they spent together. She's the one who ran over the memory until it softened into a haze of goodness on an awful night. He was simply being kind.

She walks down to him, stopping on the second to last step so that they are at eye level.

"Father Evans," she says in greeting.

"What are you doing here," he asks, his eyes stray to the church doors before finding hers again. "It's cold out. You should be inside."

Liz waggles her coffee cup. "I have my coffee to keep me warm."

"The church would keep you warmer."

_ Doubtful _ , Liz thinks. She sidesteps his response and answers his question. "I'm waiting on my sister."

"She's meeting you here?"

"No, she's at a meeting inside. I'm her designated driver."

Liz laughs slightly at Father Evans' confusion. "Sorry bad joke," she says. "She's at an AA meeting. Her first since the hospital."

Father Evans' eyes widen, and Liz realizes what she said was in poor taste, but she doesn't apologize. He's a priest; she's sure he's heard uglier things.

"That is tonight," he says, pushing an errant hair out of his face.

He says it like he'd forgotten.

Liz raises an eyebrow. There's a melancholic air about him, she has no standard to measure him against but he seems different somehow. Something feels off.

"Is something wrong, Father?"

Father Evans swallows and though he does not open his mouth he looks as if he's at a loss for words.

Liz takes a step down. Remembering the woman he was looking after she asks, "Did something happen to Luisa?"

He laughs, but it's not happy. His hands go to his hips and he looks up at the sky. A soft, "Jesus," falls from his lips.

She blinks, caught off guard. A priest that blasphemes, that's a first.

"Sorry," Father Evans says shaking his head. He pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales.

"Sorry. Luisa is fine."

"That's a good thing isn't it?"

"It's a miracle," he says. "I'm just...it's been a long day."

Liz takes the final step down. She looks up at Father Evans, takes his hand from his face and holds it in hers. She's not usually tactile with strangers, but he looks like he needs someone, and Liz has ten more minutes before her sister's meeting ends. Her days have been filled with waiting. If she can wait and be of use then she'll gladly try to be the comfort he needs like he was to her.

Father Evans' hold on her hand is loose. He stares at their clasped palms. "Ms. Ortecho...," he says but nothing follows.

"I'm always early," Liz says, steering them back to their previous conversation. "My sister, Rosa, has run away more than once. It's not rational but I arrive early when she needs me to pick her up. Makes me feel like I'm lessening the odds of her running away again. I'm a scientist; I know that's not a sound, logical leap. There's no evidence to prove my hypothesis, but here I am in the cold anyway."

"You can't control the actions of others," Father Evans says, eyes finally meeting hers.

Liz rolls her eyes. Amused, if a little exasperated. "I'm aware, Father, but you're one to talk."

"How so?"

"What would you call a sermon," she asks, her hand swings a bit. His hold tightens.

"A lesson."

"Control by any other name," Liz sing-songs, smiling at the tiny bit of an affronted quirk to the father's lips.

"How can you say that?"

She shrugs. "If a sermon is a lesson that implies something needs to be learned. If something needs to be learned then it follows that it needs to be taught. If you're the one teaching then you're controlling the flow of knowledge. You decide what the congregation knows, what they believe."

Father Evans drops her hand.

Liz struck a nerve. She can see it as he puts his hands in his pockets and steps back from her.

"The Lord decides what His flock believes," Father Evans says. There's a distance in his voice. He no longer sounds lost.

The doors to the church open. People begin to file out stating their goodbyes and intentions to see each other next time.

"And you've never questioned if you have a hand in that?"

Father Evans stares at her. Liz knows she should stop talking. She's saying too much, speaking words she's long kept to herself, but she can't seem to stop now that she's spoken them. The door to the cage they were locked in has sprung open. It's too late to put them back.

"You've never questioned whether it's you they believe in? Someone they can see and touch? Someone they can project their faith onto since it has nowhere to go?"

"Ms. Ortecho, that's--"

"Blasphemous. I know. But have you?"

_ There it is again _ , Liz thinks as she matches the father's gaze with her own.  _ That presence. As if God Himself is standing with us. Is this how it's supposed to feel? Is this what people mean when they say they feel Him wherever they go? _

"Liz!"

Rosa's voice jolts her forward. She turns to see her sister in the church doorway, eyes flitting between her and Father Evans.

He excuses himself without answering her as Rosa walks to them.

"Is everything okay," Rosa asks, suspicious.

"I don't know," Liz whispers, eyes staying on Father Evans until he enters the church, the door closes behind him. "I don't know."

\---

Asking around about Father Evans is easy. His name is the kind to inspire smiles and anecdotes. The more information Liz collects the more she sees a pattern begin to emerge. The people who talk the most about him had an ailing family member, friend, partner, co-worker, name the connection he's visited and he's "laid hands" on them.

She tells Rosa who stops long enough in her painting to say, "He's a Catholic priest. I thought "laying hands" was a Protestant thing. Pope Francis add some new tricks to the playbook?"

"Maybe," Liz says. She's pretty sure that's not how it works, but she also can't remember the last time she attended a service. A millenniums old religion is allowed to update itself every now and again, right?

"Why do you care anyway?"

"Just curious," she says, her voice going small like it can hide from her sister, but Rosa always finds her out.

Rosa mixes white into blue, lightening the color. "He's a priest, Liz."

"I know that."

"Do you," Rosa asks returning to her painting.

"Yes."

Rosa doesn't say anything else, just paints, but Liz can hear what she doesn't say in the silence.  _ Leave the priest with the freaky "healing" hands alone. _

"I'm going to the lab," Liz says, grabbing her bag.

Her sister waves and promises to save her some dinner.

\---

The walk home is lonely.

There were no breakthroughs at the lab.

Science isn't perfect, but Liz understands it. Tonight though she couldn't concentrate. Her mind kept drifting to Father Evans and his hands. They seemed no more special than any man's. Slightly rough like he worked with them occasionally, calloused in places, soft in others. They had comforted her, and they were caring, but they'd done nothing of note beyond that.

"Ms. Ortecho."

Liz sucks in a breath. Her head whips to the side. Father Evans is crossing the street and thanking a passing car for letting him go before it makes its way into the night. He jogs to her.

"Thank you."

"For what," she asks, pushing her bag higher on her shoulder.

"Waiting," he says. "I was rude the last time we spoke. You could have pretended you didn't hear me."

"Then I would have been rude...and a liar."

Father Evans chuckles, low and mostly to himself. Liz sways closer.

"You don't strike me as a liar," he says.

"It's inconvenient," she says. "The truth is quicker and to the point."

"That's one way of looking at it."

Liz looks down the street and then nods her head in the direction she'd been walking. "Do you want to walk with me?"

Father Evans looks down the street, too, and then back at her. "I'd only meant to apologize--"

"Which you've yet to do," Liz says with a smirk.

"Because you haven't given me a chance to, Ms. Ortecho."

She gestures for him to go on.

Father Evans fidgets, and Liz notices the book in his hand as he adjusts his watch. It's a bible with a gold cross on its cover.

"I admit I was uncomfortable with your questions," he says. "I'm a priest, it's not for me to question."

"But you do anyway," Liz says. It's a matter of fact. "You save those who can't be healed, but you tell them it's God that has saved them even though you don't believe that yourself."

Father Evans' mouth opens and then presses into a firm line. "You don't know what I believe."

Liz knows that every person she talked to about him spoke of his humility. He took no credit for what he called God's work. They beamed but their gratitude reminded her of his frown. The sadness that clung to him in the chapel and outside the church. Father Evans seems more like a man without faith. There's no joy in him save for the glimpses of his smile and laugh he'd given her. He's serious, resolute, and so very weary.

"You're right," she says. "But tell me, Father, how can a man with your gifts keep them hidden if he has faith?"

"I'm not hiding."

"You're not opening the church doors either. It's all word of mouth. Who you know. Who you talk to. That's how people find you."

"Ms. Ortecho," Father Evans says with his hand tight on his bible. "I really just meant to apologize."

She shakes her head. "It's okay. You can refuse to answer my question."

"I'm not refusing."

"You're not answering."

"What you're asking is blasphemous."

"I believe that we were created," Liz starts, frustration bleeds into her words. She told him she was faithless, and he did not judge her. But now his denials feel like judgement. She is not the one who spoke of a miracle like it was her own damnation. "I believe that the stars are gas and the Moon is a chunk of bygone Earth. I believe the Sun will one day reach its hand out too closely, and we'll burn."

"What are you getting at?," Father Evans asks, annoyed. Liz doesn't let it deter her.

"Do you believe in God, Father?"

"How can I be a priest if I don't?"

"That's not an answer," Liz says and tries again. "Do you believe in God?"

"Do you?"

The street is empty, and they are not yelling. Nothing but streetlights and road signs are bearing witness to this exchange, and yet Liz feels exposed like she is standing naked before Father Evans.

"I don't know," she says, adjusting her bag again. "I have a drug addict for a sister and a mother whose hallucinations drove her away from us when I was 17. If I believe in God then I have to believe this is what He had planned for me and my father. If I don't then there is nothing, there are no answers, there is only this. Neither option is comforting."

"What is comforting," Liz continues. "Is knowing the faith people cling to in this town is attached to someone I can talk to, someone who talks back. I don't believe you're a conduit for God. I'm not even sure He exists, but you do. There is empirical evidence of your work. I--"

"You ask questions," Father Evans says cutting her off. "You insist on answers, and you don't slow down long enough for anyone to catch their breath. I am a man of God, Ms. Ortecho. I am compelled to--"

"Lie," she interrupts. "You are compelled to lie. Luisa Mayberry had stage 4 cancer. Her prognosis was devastating. They gave her three months before her body would be completely ravaged by the disease. Now her cancer is miraculously gone, seemingly overnight."

When he says nothing, Liz goes on. "James Miller had an infection eating away at his flesh and no health insurance. He went to a clinic you were making the rounds at. His infection cleared by the next day without a single blemish. Fantasia Brown was losing her sight. You prayed with her and her vision gradually improved until she could see better than she had years before her diagnosis."

"You don't have to answer my previous question," Liz says, feeling her eyes prick with tears. She will not cry, not like this. "But please answer this one. If I asked you to heal my sister, could you do it?"

Father Evans' annoyance drains rapidly into helplessness at her question. "Liz," he whispers like her name is caught in his throat. He reaches out for her and then pulls his hand back. "Please don't ask me that."

"Why?"

"Because I can't give you the answer you want."

Her lip wobbles, she takes it between her teeth and inhales sharply. "Of course you can't," she says, her voice waterlogged by tears she won't let fall.

"It's complicated."

"It always is."

"I can only heal physical injuries, tangible illnesses," he says. "Addiction is a disease of the mind. Her brain chemistry has been altered; she's imbalanced. Anything I could do would be temporary, and she'd be worse off in the long run."

It feels like some kind of sick cosmic joke. She finds the one person who can heal her sister, and he won't because it'd be as fleeting as Rosa's sobriety.  _ How can there be a God _ , she wonders.  _ If all He has planned for me is pain? _

"Thank you for your honesty, Father," Liz says and steps back, looking away.

Father Evans steps forward. "Max," he says, trying to catch her eye. "My name is Max."

Liz looks back at him surprised. She didn't expect to learn his name. Max Evans stands before her with pleading eyes and a face broken open from sorrow.

"I'm sorry," Max says. "I can't heal your sister."

He looks down at his hands, licks his lips. "But I can...I can take your pain away...for a little while."

Slowly and then all at once, Max's right hand starts to glow a soft pink. Liz stares at it in wonder.

"Max..."

"If it's what you need," he says, holding his hand out.

Liz thinks back to the chapel where he absolved her without any requirements. Now he's offering something without her having to ask. Max gives. Liz learned that from the people he's helped, but she's not sure if this is something she can take.

They're on an empty street, and he's telling her he can take her pain away. It feels eerily similar to a drug deal. Like she's Rosa, weighing whether or not to take a hit. Except Max wouldn't offer her anything that would hurt her. Max isn't someone who would hurt anyone unless he had to. She doesn't need evidence to believe that; she just knows.

Liz thinks about the ten minutes left in her walk home. How her heart feels like it's fracturing. How the anger she's been holding onto is slowly turning into despair, and she feels a cry building. That makes her decision for her.

Shakily, Liz nods. "Okay," she says and takes his hand.

Max's hand shifts from pink to orange. The buzz of the bulbs in the street lamps grows louder. The lights brighten and flicker. Liz feels a rush like a wave of contentment, and then she smiles for the first time in weeks.

\---

Max Evans is promised to God. His eyes are not meant to wander. His hands are not meant to stray. And yet his feet lead him to Liz every time she enters his church. They're a pair in a pew. The scientist and the priest. The faithless and the faith bound.

Liz doesn't use his title, she calls him by his name. Sister Hanagan believes she is too familiar and disrespectful. Max tells her he doesn't mind, but the sister insists, "The congregation will whisper, Father, it is improper and uncouth."

"Again, sister," Max says, ducking from her gaze. "I do not mind."

Sister Hanagan huffs and collects the rest of the communion cups for recycling. "You may not mind, Father," she says. "But this is the way things are done. She is not family, she is not blood. She is a woman, and she looks at you as if you are a man. But you are not. You are more. And you are God's. Your title is the world's reminder of  _ who _ and  _ what _ you are. Without its acknowledgement, you risk the order this church has established and without order there is only chaos. Do you wish to bring chaos upon this congregation?"

"No," Max says. "But she's one woman. I doubt talking to her is going to ruin the church."

"Eve was one woman," Sister Hanagan says heading toward the door. "And Eden fell to her temptation which she brought upon Adam for she talked and he listened. That is why we are not in the Garden. That is why we are not with God. Forbidden fruit may be sweet, Father, but it bitters and cannot compare to the Lord's bounty. Remember that."

Max leans against the table and exhales. Sister Hanagan is right. Liz is too close. She is closer than anyone has ever been. So close that she bears his mark. Those who knew of his healing called it being 'touched by God'. The mark iridescent even in the lowest of light.

She'd showed him her mark with quiet, hushed words minutes before the end of Rosa's meeting. It only took the sliding off of her glove for the Earth's axis to shift, for the floor to fall from him. Her mark was brighter than the others, it thrummed with life.

_ It is too late _ , Max thinks, putting away the communion trays.  _ She has already shaken the foundation of what this church has built. _

Liz had been in awe of the mark. The hit of dopamine he'd stimulated in her had worn off days ago but this took its place. She wanted to know how it works, but he didn't know the science behind it, so she gave him her best educated guess.

"I believe it's laminae," she'd said excited. "Epithelium covers the human body but before anything can permeate its surface, it has to cross epithelial tissue. Lamina serves as a kind of bridge like an attachment site separating the epithelium from the underlying connective tissue. But human laminae doesn't glow."

"This," Liz said with a smile, running her hand across the mark on her hand. "Reminds me of the laminae in butterfly wings. Same thin, flat piece of a composite structure but with more light passing through than is common, at least for humans. Butterfly wings have two to three layers of microscopic scales and each scale has multiple layers separated by air. The result? Iridescence as soon as light hits their surface."

"Max," she'd said, stepping closer and lowering her voice. "You didn't just change my brain chemistry, you altered the biology of my skin. God has nothing to do with this. I know enough of the bible to be sure of that fact."

"God turned water into wine," he'd said trying to deflect. "He parted the Red Sea. He fed the masses with five loaves of bread and two fish. He spoke to Moses in a burning bush. You don't think he could make your skin glow?"

"I think," she said. "If God were really working through you, he wouldn't leave a mark behind. You said the point of belief is to have faith without evidence. This is evidence, Max. I can touch it, and if I study it, I can understand it. God can't be understood, isn't that what you teach every Sunday? He can only be obeyed."

"But don't you want to understand," Liz asked. "Don't you want to know how you can heal people? What it is that you do whenever you lay your hands on them? You gave me peace, let me give you answers."

Max looks down at his watch.

"Meet me at the coffee shop on Tulane," she'd said. "After communion tomorrow. We can talk."

He runs a hand down his face but he doesn't pretend that he's not going to see her. Max lies a lot, but it's been getting harder to lie to himself.

\---

Max leans against the brickface of the coffee shop. He's early, half due to nervousness and half because he's vigilantly punctual when anxious. The street isn't crowded but it is full. Fathers pass with their children, women rush to their own appointments with their coats flapping behind them like wings. Sunday is no longer a day of rest for many people. Sister Agatha blames capitalism and will talk to anyone who will listen to her about democratic socialism and Bernie Sanders. Max thinks Liz would like her. They both question the systems that run the world.

"More cowboy than priest today," Liz asks, sidling up to him with a smile. She reaches up and flicks the brim of his hat as she passes and looks over her shoulder with a laugh. The bell chimes over the door when it opens and she asks, "Are you coming," without waiting for an answer.

It takes them a few minutes to get their drinks, but it takes longer to sit. The barista knew him. Her cousin had been in a bad car accident, and she thanked him for sitting by his side. "It seemed to make his recovery go faster," she said passing him the tea he ordered.

Patricia Gordon waddled over to him about ready to pop with her third child. She asked for absolution for missing communion. She hadn't felt well and the coffee shop seemed to be the only place where she could eat a meal and keep it down. He tried to remind her she was only required to receive communion once a year and she'd attended every mass but this one, but she wouldn't hear of it. So, he quickly and quietly did as she asked and required her to read over her favorite scriptures and think on the Lord's blessings and to attend Monday morning prayer so that she may worship as she would have today.

She left with her thanks and a sheen to her eyes which Max didn't think the situation warranted but he had hot tea in his hand and no time to ask if there was anything else wrong. He made a mental note to ask after her tomorrow morning.

"Well, that was unexpected," Liz says once they're settled in their booth all the way in the back where the surrounding tables are empty.

"Sorry."

She waves him off. "You're a priest. Being accosted by people's emotions is in the job description. I should have picked a more secluded place."

"Accosted," Max asks, raising his eyebrow and placing his hat on the end of the table.

"Too harsh," she asks, taking a sip of her coffee. "Bombarded then. I don't mean to offend. It's just...when I clock out at the lab, I'm done for the day. But your day doesn't end. The whole town is your workplace. It must be exhausting."

Max's heart skips a beat; Liz's hand moves on the table, but he doesn't take notice of it, too caught up in her words.

Liz has the precision of a scalpel. She cuts and peels back a layer, cuts and peels back a layer, cuts and peels back a layer with simple observations and blunt statements.

Max shifts and fidgets with his cup. "My day ends when I close my eyes."

"And then it begins again."

"But it's the same for everyone, Liz."

"Is it," she asks, looking intently at him. "Because your day sounds more like God's than my own."

Max twitches, and Liz shifts.

"It sounds like the day of anyone who is known," Max says, uncomfortable once again with the direction Liz seems intent to move in. He is not God, and she's not insinuating that he is. She already believes he's not the Lord's conduit, but she keeps poking at the idea that he is something more, something else, something that's not God's but entirely its own. It's unsettling because she is more right than she knows.

"Fair point," Liz says, sitting back in her seat. "I don't think I'd want to be known at least not in that way. It's cliche, but knowledge does have power. I'd rather be known for what I've done not who or what I am. There's an expectancy to labels that I don't like."

"Isn't a scientist who you are," Max asks, getting his footing back in the conversation. He's more comfortable hearing about her than he is talking about himself. Though he knows she'll return to her questions about him, she always does.

Liz shakes her head. "No," she says. "I am a bio-engineer, but that's just what I do. What I am is Latina. And who I am is Liz Ortecho, daughter of Arturo and Elena Ortecho. My father runs a cafe that he now owns where I learned to read and where Rosa learned to play the guitar. My mother is an artist but when we were growing up her days were spent taking care of us and doing jobs under the table for money."

"People hear bio-engineer and they start thinking of labs,” Liz continues. “They hear Latina and they assume I wasn't born here. If I say I'm Mexican they jump to the conclusion that I'm undocumented. Labels produce assumptions that can be accurate but are often wrong, and they're biased. My Latinidad is personal. It's not something you can know by looking at me. It's not a label; It's an identity; it's just not treated with the respect it deserves. That's why there are children in cages at the border, and why I think you hide behind the shroud of God."

Max jerks forward. Tea spills on the table, and he coughs. Liz looks concerned but she doesn't help him though she does mop up the spilled tea before cradling the hand with the mark on it with her other hand. Her fingerless gloves are dark against the white wood of the table.

"It's easier," Liz says, once Max has stopped coughing. "Passing. Pretending you're the same. Inconvenient and a lie, but easier than the what ifs when a quick glance at history can tell you what happens to those who are different from the majority. "

She nods at Max's cup of tea. "I bet," Liz says. "If I were to compare your cells to mine I'd find that they're not human or, better phrased, not what we know to be human."

Max's heart beat skyrockets. "This was a bad idea," he stutters out, shaking as he gets out of the booth. "Thank you for the tea, Ms. Ortecho, but I have to get back to the church."

"Max--"

He ignores her and walks away, kicking himself. They haven't known each other long, but he knows how inquisitive she is and how fast her mind works. Liz jumps from thought to thought connecting what she observes with her own interpretations and changing what she believes based on her findings. He knew it wouldn't take her long to figure it out, he just didn't think it would be this quick.

Max gets as far as the alley near the street corner before he feels a tug on his hand and then there's a flash. He's seven in a white room with nothing in it but a table. A man sits at the table with a clipboard asking him questions about what he remembers of before he came to them. He's sniffling and clutching at a ratty teddy bear, but he's not saying anything just staring at the spot on the wall behind the man's ear.

He gasps and turns.

Liz is standing there, wide-eyed. "Was that you?"

"You saw that?"

"Yeah," she says licking her lips. Max's eyes drop to them briefly. It's involuntary. He is scared and unsure and yet her tongue is a distraction.

Her eyes narrow. Liz pulls on her glove and looks up and down the street. They're alone, but she gestures toward the alley anyway. Though he berates himself for it, Max follows.

"I'm sorry, Max," Liz says. "I didn't mean to spook you, I was trying to let you know I understand. My offer still stands. If you want answers, I'll help you find them."

"What makes you think I want answers?"

She holds up her marked hand. "This does," Liz says. "I can feel you. You're anxious, and you want to run. You think I know too much. Your heart is racing. This is as new to you as it is to me."

"You can feel me?"

"Yes," she says, stepping closer. "Max, I can feel everything. It's like I'm drowning in you."

"That's not possible," Max says. It's never happened before. The mark has shown up occasionally but duller, without the vibrancy of Liz's just a shine like something glittering in the sun. No one who had it spoke of experiencing anything.

"Right now, you're trying to stay afloat," she says. "It's like you can't breathe. There's too much pressure."

Max puts his hands in his pockets, tries to stay still but it feels like he's vibrating. Like he's a tuning fork that Liz has struck so she can match its frequency to her own. He doesn't want to be known, he doesn't want to be seen and yet with her...well, that's the thing. It's always "and yet" with Liz. She terrifies him and yet. She pushes him and yet. She shakes apart his carefully constructed world and yet.

"I'm sorry," Liz says, there are tears in her eyes, and Max is torn between running away and comforting her. "I don't mean to be so,"--she waves her hand and closes her eyes for a moment, a tear falls. "I spend my days waiting to go home to find Rosa unconscious on the floor again. I wake up wanting to leave and then I'll hear her humming as she makes herself some tea and whispers her prayers."

Liz laughs and it's sad and it's small. She wraps her arms around her torso. "God left her  _ dying _ alone, but she thanks Him every day for picking her up. I don't understand her. From her drug use to her faith, my sister is a mystery to me. Every day I am just trying to stay afloat, to not drown, to breathe, to relieve the pressure of being the one who has to keep it together. And then I talk to you, and I feel better."

"Before you laid hands on me I didn't know why that was but when the mark appeared and your presence washed over me, I began to understand. There is something about you that calls to me, and I think you feel the same way."

Max feels a chord in his heart thrum, and Liz gasps, another tear falls.

"Right there," she says. "That feeling right there. I should feel scared, and I do believe me. I'm terrified out of my mind right now, but not of you. Of  _ this _ . Of whatever this is. But we don't have to be afraid. I can...I can figure this out. Figure you out. I can get us answers."

Liz's face is open. She has laid her heart bare.

Max takes a deep, shaky breath in. He's on the edge of a precipice. Liz is asking for more than vulnerability; she's asking for trust. The truth is more than quick and efficient, it's damning. He has lived his life in ignorance, using what he knows about his gifts to help people but never to help himself or learn about what he is. Max has never shared himself with anyone. He's only allowed them to take what he's giving.

"This will pass," he says. Liz is curious. She can feel him now, but the mark will fade. Her interest will, too. It has to.

"It won't change anything," she says with such conviction.

"How do you know that?"

"Because this is the one thing I believe in right now. The one thing that feels sure."

Gobsmacked, Max says nothing. Finally, Liz asks, "How long does the mark last?"

"A couple of days."

With a nod, Liz reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pen and a scrap of paper. She writes a series of numbers on it, and passes it to Max.

"Call me in two," she says. "I'll let you know if anything changes. But, Max, I'm pretty sure it won't."

Liz leaves Max in the alley with a lot to think about and a decision to make.

\---

He places the call on Tuesday. Liz picks up on the third ring.

"Nothing's changed," she says by way of greeting.

Max releases the breath he was holding, but he's not sure if he's relieved. "How did you know it was me," he asks, trying to stall what's to come next. He can practically see her eyes roll as she says amused, "Caller I.D. has been a thing for awhile, Max. You're calling from a church not a personal phone, kinda removes the mystery of it all."

"Right."

"Mhm."

His finger wraps around the phone's chord; he yanks at it lightly as he thinks of what to say.

"I think this is the part where you say what you want," Liz says, coaxing him along.

"I don't know what I want."

"What do you mean?"

"You told me to call," Max says on a sigh. "So I did, but I haven't gotten any further than I did in the alley."

"We'll start small then," Liz says. "What do you want right now?"

"To talk to you," he says, faster than he'd meant to, but it's been a couple of days. She's been on his mind. He prayed and he thought of what she said about Rosa, wondered if the last time Liz prayed was in the hospital chapel. He listened to confessions, and his mind wandered to the way she whispered her sins. She claimed them, wouldn't apologize, but asked for forgiveness anyway. Liz was fierce in her grief. Sadness and heartache surrounded her, flowed into her words, and stole most of her breath, but she didn't look fragile in the low light of the chapel. She looked like resilience personified, tired but unwilling to give up. But, he knows that's not how she felt, so he listened.

Sister Hanagan had been right about what leads someone down the path of temptation. It's a person's voice. The way it holds their emotions, gives away their feelings, and resonates. Liz's voice is like the ocean. It soothes and it lulls but it also breaks when upset and rises when provoked. Listening to her is like being engulfed by her. Her voice wraps around him and submerges him until he can scarcely tell which way is up and which way is down.

"Then talk to me," she says, and so he does, hand tight on the receiver and eyes closed like he’s jumping off the precipice. But he doesn’t feel alone, not with Liz on the line. It’s like she’s there with him. Like they’re sitting in the pew and he’s showing her his heart, one confession at a time. 

Max tells Liz that he was found wandering a desert. He remembers there being two other kids, but he doesn't know what happened to them. A cop took his statement, or at least tried to, he was nonverbal at the time and wouldn't look anyone in the eye. A social worker tried next, but he failed as well. Then they brought in a child psychologist, and she didn't fare any better. Finally, they decided to give him the estimated age of 7, assigned his birthday as the day he'd been found, and placed him in the system.

"I was lucky," he explains. "I was adopted within a year by a nice older couple. Martha and James Evans. I was with them until I turned 18, but they never really felt like my parents and I wondered if they ever really felt like I was their son. I couldn't get close to them, couldn't get close to anyone really. I just kept thinking about those two other kids, where they were, who they ended up with. I tried looking for them for a few years but my leads led to dead ends. All I have of them are the names they were given, Michael and Isobel, and a picture they took of us when we were being processed.”

Max talks, and Liz listens. She asks a question occasionally, laughs when he tells her a story about his childhood, and he finds that it’s not so hard talking about himself when it’s her listening. He has never had anyone be interested in him for himself. 

He was the adopted kid in a conservative town where blood was thicker than water. His classmates were intrigued by his otherness, and when their curiosity waned so did their interest in him. He lost his virginity at 17 to a girl named Sarah who wanted to lose it to an ‘outsider’ which was strange to hear because he’d lived in that town since he was eight, but it was the first time since his parents adopted him that he felt noticed. 

“It’s not that I wanted to be seen,” Max says. “I’ve never really wanted that but I wanted to be acknowledged. And Sarah sized me up and told me exactly what she wanted, no pretenses. I think that’s when I realized there were things I could give people even if they gave me nothing in return.”

“We did it in the bed of her pick-up truck. I kept wondering if I was doing it right; if I was living up to what she wanted. But it didn’t seem to matter to her. It was like she was checking a box off her list,”--he laughs--”Sleep with the town outsider done, now onto the groceries. Afterward Sarah thanked me, said it wasn’t half-bad, and then we never talked about it again. The rest of Senior year was spent like the beginning, alone with my head in a book.”

“Is that why you left town after graduation?”

“Partly,” Max says. “I didn’t feel like I belonged there, and my parents knew. I could see it on my mom’s face every weekend I spent home. And my dad, he would just shake his head and tell me to put my book down long enough to take in the world. A few months before graduation I took his advice and got a part-time job. I saved enough to buy a clunker and to put a down payment on a crappy apartment anywhere I went. My mom wanted me out of the house more and my dad wanted me to see the world, so I gave them what they wanted.”

“That sounds lonely.”

“It was. And that’s how I found church.”

Liz laughs and it sounds husky. Max glances at the clock on his desk. It’s well after 11 at night. They’ve been talking for hours.

“You left a conservative town,” she says through a chuckle. “And  _ then _ you found church?”

“No,” Max says. “I went to church every Sunday with my parents. Sometimes, I would sneak in during the week and sit up in the rafters. It was the only place where I didn’t feel like I was different. So, I guess I shouldn’t say I found church. It’s more that I found God and then I found religion. I had to...I’d never healed anyone before. But then I did, and I had no one to talk to about it.”

Liz sobers. The line gets quiet. For a moment, Max thinks this might be where he said too much, but then Liz exhales and says, “The first time you healed someone you were on your own?”

“Yeah,” he says, remembering how dark it was. How scared he was clutching this kid he’d found on the side of the road. His phone was dead, so he couldn’t call for help, and putting him in the car wasn’t an option. He had no idea where the nearest hospital was, he was just passing through. 

The kid was bleeding out, he’d shot himself. All he could think about was how that could have been him. Alone, parents none the wiser as he offed himself on an empty road with no one to witness.

“I prayed,” Max says. “A real prayer not just the words I’d been taught to recite. I didn’t want a miracle; I wanted someone to come help us. I couldn’t have been much older than him, two or three years maybe but he was so small. And I kept thinking, “We’re alone. No one’s coming,” but I was still praying and time was passing. My hands were covered in blood, and the kid, Daniel, was crying. He wouldn’t stop apologizing.”

“It made me angry,” he continues, getting lost in the memory. “His apologies. Like he had something to be sorry for. Like he wasn’t worth noticing, wasn’t worth stopping for. As if I should have kept driving and left him there to die alone. I got so angry that I yelled at him to shut up and as soon as the words left my mouth, my hands started glowing. First pink, then orange, and I felt this rising pressure. Something, I don’t know what, told me to push, so I did. I pushed outward and it felt like lightning raced down from my hands into his wound. It hurt, burned even, but I kept pushing. Daniel didn’t say anything, he was so quiet even after the glowing stopped. Even after I pulled my hands away, and he pulled up his shirt to find his wound had closed. We just sat there not saying a word.”

“Eventually, Daniel said he had to go home. I offered to drive him there, but he shook his head. He thanked me even called me some kind of angel, but I didn’t feel like an angel. It’s one thing to know you’re not human. I’d known that before I knew anything about this planet. But I had considered myself human adjacent, and in one night I found out I wasn’t. I wasn’t anything close to human. That really messed with me. I went from being lost to being aimless and more lonely than I could stand. That’s how I found myself in a pew, and I kept coming back and coming back until I decided to make the church my life. Until I decided to make it my home because it’s the only place I’ve ever felt like I’m no different than any other sinner praying to a God they half-believe in.”

Max feels jittery, his knee bounces under the table with his nerves. But there’s one last thing he wants to tell Liz. He’s been nothing but honest. She’s only ever wanted the truth from him, and this has been sitting on his heart for awhile. 

“Until you,” he says. “I don’t feel different with you. Seen but not different.”

It’s silent for a moment and then Liz says in a rush, “I’m coming over.”

“It’s nearly midnight,” Max says, surprised.

“I don’t care,” she says. “I’ll see you in 20.”

Liz hangs ups, and Max stares at the phone before putting it back on the hook.

\---

Liz throws her car in park, and is up and out of it quicker than she should be at midnight after a full day's work and hours on the phone. But it doesn't matter. What matters is Max standing in the archway of the church side door, shadows behind him as he waits for her.

She gets to him and she asks, "Did you mean it," and Max doesn't feign confusion. He knows what she's asking. Has known she'd ask since minute five of waiting on her. But what he's not prepared for, what he doesn't expect is for Liz to kiss him after he whispers, "Yes."

Max is backed up against the wooden door, thrown off by her momentum, and glad that the door is heavy. If it weren't, the church's inhabitants would hear a loud bang against the marble wall announcing his sin. He is breaking a covenant, a sworn vow, and he's doing it in the church no less, but he doesn't feel like he's sinning. There's no acrid taste in his mouth just the honey of Liz's tongue sliding against his.

_ He tastes like all the good in the world,  _ Liz thinks, fingers hooked into Max's shirt. She breaks the kiss with a swear of "God" and Max comes back to himself. His eyes wide as he grabs her hands.

“Liz,” Max croaks. 

“Max, I--,” Liz tries, but she’s at a loss for words. There’s so much swirling inside of her, too much to put voice to. She looks down at their hands, and then up at the archway and the stained glass windows, and she calms. “Let’s go to the rafters. We can talk there.”

With her hand in his, Max leads them through the darkness and walks up the steps, climbing higher and higher until they reach their destination. For a moment he hesitates before a pew but decides against it. He doesn’t want them to be seen. Instead, he sits in the corner of the box, back resting against wood, knee pressed against the slab where they’re meant to kneel. Liz settles beside him.

The first thing out of Max’s mouth is that he’s a priest, but he doesn’t say it like she’s somehow forgotten. He says it like he’s resigned.

“And I’m a scientist,” Liz says, pulling his hand into her lap. “Some would say we’re a contradiction, but we work.”

“Liz, you know what I mean.”

“I know that you made a vow to God,” she says, turning his face to hers. “But if God forgives like you preach he does then He’ll forgive you this.”

“Not you?”

She thinks on it, her teeth bite into her lip as she does. “Maybe,” she says, finally. “I’m not sure how forgiveness works if you don’t believe in it. In the chapel I asked for forgiveness, but I was asking you not God. And now I think I might not need it, do you think I need to be forgiven?”

“I think,” Max starts tentatively, running his thumb over Liz’s hand. “Forgiveness is personal. It’s not about what you need; it’s about what you want.”

“Well, I want you,” Liz says, easy. “I want to help you figure out who you are, and I want to see what we are together. I want to stop saying prayers I’m not sure I mean, and I want to stop feeling guilty for not having the faith my sister does. And I don’t want to feel ashamed for feeling how I feel about you. I don’t want forgiveness; it’s fleeting. There’ll be something else I need forgiveness for. But if it’s about what I want then I want the peace you bring me. If that’s a sin then I’ll gladly be a sinner because I have never felt this way about anyone.”

Max’s heart lifts at Liz’s words like it has wings. It flutters and bumps against his rib cage, his breath shortens but it is no less free to do what it wants than he is. With a sigh, Max lets go of Liz’s hand.

“This church saved me,” he says looking up at its vaulted ceiling. 

Liz lays her hand gently against Max’s cheek and brings his attention back to her. She smiles softly, taking in the apology on his face and pushing his hair out of his eyes. 

“The church kept you alive,” she says. “But it didn’t save you, Max. If it did you wouldn’t be drowning. I look at you, and I see a man who’s still sitting at the side of the road clutching a dying boy. Every person you encounter, every person you heal. New injury, new illness, still Daniel. “

“How do you--”

“I know what it’s like not to be able to save someone.

“I healed, Daniel.”

“But you couldn’t save him,” Liz says, swallowing hard. She remembers the desperation on Max’s face begging her not to ask him for something he couldn’t give. He couldn’t help Rosa. It would be temporary, fleeting, she’d be worse off he’d said. And the anger in his voice when talking about Daniel, the frustration. It was a story he’d never told anyone but his voice had gone hoarse like he’d told himself the story over and over again. Liz knows that pain. She relieves it every time she looks at her sister.

“People with depression,” Liz says slowly and licks her lips. “They can’t be healed like everyone else. You healed Daniel’s wound, but you couldn’t heal his mind.”

Max takes a sharp breath in, it lodges in his throat. This is the consequence of being seen, of someone noticing him. All the secrets he's buried, his stowed away memories, the things only he dared to touch are now visible to her. Ghost-like in their appearance, Liz can only make out the shapes of what he isn't saying, but scientists are like detectives, they don't need much to follow a lead to the truth.

He feels like a light has been flipped on unexpectedly; it's unsettling. But Max can't lie to Liz. He tried, and she saw through it. He spoke in half-truths, and she saw through those, too. It is too late for lies, and he is too tired to try. Heaving a sigh, Max stops concealing the weight he's been carrying for over a decade.

“Daniel killed himself a month after I healed him,” Max says. “It was all over the news. He’d chosen a field instead of a road. His goodbye note included an apology to me.  _ To the angel who helped me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. _ ”

“Max--”

“I was two towns over, and I couldn’t...I lost it...I...what was the point of doing what I could do if he was going to die anyway? What was the point of me?”

Max dips his head, wipes a tear from his cheek. “I am unearthly. I don’t belong here. The least I can do is--”

“Don’t do that,” Liz says, fiercely. “You don’t have to justify why you’re here. What happened with Daniel wasn’t your fault. You tried, Max. That’s all any of us can do.”

He looks at her, eyes hard. “If you really believed that you’d take your own advice, Liz.”

Liz scoots back. “What?”

“I could tell you the only one who can save Rosa is herself,” he says. “I could say it a million times, but you’d still blame yourself if she relapses or overdoses again. You have waited for her after every AA meeting. You cheered her on when she got her one month sober chip. Rosa is getting healthier every day, and she feels supported by you. All anyone has to do is see the way she smiles when she sees you to know that. But whenever she looks away, you look like you’re going to lose her some way, somehow, and yet you still keep trying. Isn’t that all you can do?”

There is a stubborn pull to Liz’s frown. She wants to tell him that it’s not all she can do; she could have more faith, she could trust Rosa. Maybe if she had been more attentive she would have noticed Rosa was using again. Maybe if she’d come home earlier Rosa wouldn’t have overdosed. Maybe if she--

“Liz,” Max says, shaking his head. “Don’t. If there’s nothing I could have done then there’s nothing you could have done.”

She looks away.

“If you can’t accept that then how do you expect me to?”

Max leans toward Liz. He wants to touch her so bad. To wipe the tears from her eyes. But she looks like it’s the last thing she wants.

“I don’t know,” she whispers, shrugging helplessly. Liz looks back at him. “If forgiveness is about what you want over what you need then what do you want, Max?”

He sits back. “I can’t answer that.”

“Yes, you can,” Liz says moving closer.

“No,” he says.

“Max,” she pleads, and all he can do is look at her. Look at her and not touch. If he could go back to their kiss he would. If he could go back to the alleyway, the cafe, the street corner, the chapel at the hospital, their first meeting at the nurse’s desk, he would. He’d relive every moment. Every moment but this one where she’s crying and he feels like his heart is going to break free from its cage.

The Lord is watching. His eyes are upon them, and Max doesn’t care. If it came down to what he wanted it would be Liz in his arms and his hands anywhere she wanted. It’d be him and her. Wherever she wanted to go, whatever she wanted to be. He’d follow her lead, his soul be damned.

“Please,” Max begs. “Don’t...I want you to help me. I want to learn more about myself. But that’s all this can be. I shouldn’t have told you…”

“But you did.”

“I know.”

Liz takes a shuddery breath in and then stands. She walks in front of Max, takes her place between his legs, and leans down to press a kiss against his forehead. 

Max’s eyes flutter shut, and she drops to her knees and pulls him into a hug.

“You belong here,” Liz says, firmly. “There doesn’t need to be a reason why.”

His hands splay across her back, and just for this moment he gives in and lets his mouth rest against her neck. 

Liz’s breath is hot against Max’s ear. His hands are slow to let her go, but he does.

“Are you free Friday,” Liz asks.

Max nods.

“Come by my place in the morning around 10. We can work on getting you those answers.”

Liz pulls out a pen and a piece of paper from her pocket. Max is beginning to think she doesn’t go anywhere without scrap paper and a writing utensil. Like she’s always got ideas or breakthroughs she needs to jot down no matter where she is. He smiles down at her as she writes out her address.

“See you Friday,” Liz says, putting the paper in Max’s hand.

“Friday,” he confirms.

With one last brush of her hand against his cheek, Liz stands and leaves the rafters. Not for the first time, it feels like she’s leaving something important behind. She’s starting to suspect it’s her heart, and she’s not sure what to do with that knowledge other than pray it’s in the right place.

The drive home is a long one for her, but not as long as Max’s sleepless night wondering why denying Liz feels less like denying his heart and more like forsaking his soul. 

—

Friday morning is no more special than any other morning. Traffic is the same. The birds sing their same songs. But there is a rap at Liz's door, and she finds herself checking her reflection in the mirror before opening the door. Max smiles at her unsure, but he, too, looks the same. Brown leather jacket incongruously paired with a priest's collar. She smiles back at him just as unsure.

The first few minutes of their time together are spent making small talk. Max asks after Rosa. Liz answers that she's gone to the park to paint, won't be back for hours. Her cheeks threaten to redden with the words, but they don't. She controls herself, reminds herself that Rosa's warnings of seducing a priest aren't warranted. She's not seducing Max, she's...she's figuring him out. She's discovering him. He is a mystery Liz wants to solve. Her heart beating a rhythm against her chest matters only so much as she lets it matter, and right now it pales in comparison to her desire to understand.

Max is an anomaly. He says that he doesn't know where he came from between sips of water. He's never been sick, he's never been injured. He's exerted himself healing before, but it wasn't anything some rest couldn't fix. Like him, Michael and Isobel didn't display powers when they were in state custody. Max can't say whether they would have developed them later. There's a lot he doesn't know.

Liz finds herself reaching out, placing her hand over his. "That's okay," she says because that's all that can be said. She doesn't know what it's like to be a mystery unto herself. But she does know she wouldn't stop until she got answers, and she'll do the same for him.

"Ready," she asks.

Max nods and moves his empty cup out of the way. Liz comes around to his side of the table and pulls out a chair. She snaps gloves on her hands and asks Max to roll up his sleeves. After she draws four vials of blood and labels them, Liz swabs Max's mouth and steps over to her microscope.

"Well," Liz says after a moment. "Your squamous epithelial cells just confirmed what we already knew. Congratulations, Father Evans, you are not from this hell hole we call Earth."

"Max," he says, correcting her. "I know I told you that we couldn't...but I want you to call me Max."

“I can’t,” Liz says, turning fully to him. “If I’m going to keep my distance. I can’t--”

“But, I don’t want you to keep your distance.”

Liz sucks in a breath.

Max bites his lip. He knows he’s sending Liz mixed signals. But he’s not Father Evans to her, not anymore. Hearing her call him by his title is like watching every step they’ve taken together be erased. Like he didn’t sit in the rafters with her days ago just to be near her, to have her for a moment even in God’s house and before His eyes. 

_ I broke a covenant _ , he thinks as he watches Liz ready the pads she said she’d be using to monitor his heart rate.  _ I transgressed in my Father’s House. Coveted before His eyes. And I’d do it a thousand times over for one more utterance of my name from her lips. What kind of priest am I if I cannot turn away from temptation? If I refuse to turn away? _

“I need you to--,” Liz gestures to his clothes.

Max holds Liz’s gaze as he pulls his collar off. He places it on the table reverently but still away from him. The marker of God looks innocuous there on the wood. And though it weighs nothing Max feels his shoulders relax as if he’s put down a heavy burden. He makes quick work of the buttons on his shirt and then takes it off, folding it and placing it next to the collar on the table.

Liz steps forward, her cheeks are flushed. She breaks eye contact first.

“Your undershirt, too,” she whispers.

Max shucks his shirt and with the last barrier removed, Liz places the pads on his chest. 

“Your heart’s racing,” Liz says after placing the last pad. “You don’t need to be scared. I promise. I won’t hurt you.”

“I’m not scared,” Max says, voice rough. “And I know you won’t hurt me. But I…”

Liz licks her lips. “You what?”

“I don’t think I can keep my distance.”

“Max--”

_ Forgive me, Father, but I cannot call this a sin _ , Max thinks and kisses Liz. His temperature spikes. Adrenaline rushes through his veins. There is a split second of profound bliss and then Liz pulls back. Her hand goes to her lips.

“Max, we can’t,” she says once she’s recovered speech. “You made a vow.”

“One you don’t believe in.”

“But you do,” she says. “You came here for answers.”

He shakes his head. “No,” Max says. “I came here for you. To be near you. I haven’t slept, Liz. Not since you kissed me. I’ve prayed on it. I’ve waited for His counsel. But the only voice I hear is yours. You want answers, so I want to give them to you. I don’t know myself. I don’t know my own needs. But I know what it is to want, and I have never wanted so much in my whole life. Touching you. Kissing you. If there is a Devil he’s not in this. He can’t be in this. Anything you’re a part of can’t be."

Max doesn't want to scare Liz with the intensity of what he's been feeling but he's never felt like this before. This urge to be known and seen and accepted. He's always wanted a place, something or someone to make him feel less alone. The church was supposed to be that place. But now he's not sure about anything really. Except for Liz. He's sure about her.

“Sister Hanagan would call this sins of the flesh," Max continues. "She’d say it’s lust and nothing more, but I’ve lusted before. And it has felt like a pull as if I’m being dragged toward someone. Lust doesn’t care if you’re willing. It just is. That is not how I feel with you. I feel...Lord forgive me, I feel saved with you. And it scares me because that is blasphemous or it should be. But I can’t--”

“You can’t stop thinking about it,” Liz finishes. “Whatever that presence is that stays with us and leaves when we’re apart. That calling. It’s like finding purpose but in a person. I look at you, and I want to give you what you need. I want to be near you however you like, for however long I can. I want to know you like scripture, like passages scribbled in the margins. Being with you feels natural and right, and I don’t care if it’s a sin. I don’t care if there’s a Hell. And I don’t care if there’s a Heaven. What difference does it make if there is a God?”

She takes a breath and looks around her kitchen. Liz has shared this space with her sister for three years. She's seen her shaking from withdrawal at this table. Has watched her sing and dance while making dinner. Heard her whispering promises to their father she knows she will break one way or another. Seen her set goals she keeps every day. Starting each day trying. Each day since Liz found her, since Liz had found faith in something when she'd lost faith in everything, Rosa has been trying.

“God doesn’t answer my prayers," Liz says. "He is unknowable, and I never feel Him when I need Him. But, Max, if I’m honest. The closest I have felt to what they say is God’s presence is with you. In the chapel, in the church, in the coffee shop, on street corners, in this kitchen. When I touch you, when I feel you, it’s like holding the Sun in my hands and not being burned or blinded. I don’t care if that’s blasphemous. The only thing I care about is how you feel about it. How you feel about us.”

Max rubs a hand down his face. Tears prickle at his eyes. No one has ever made him feel wanted like Liz has. No one has ever asked him what he wants or how he feels. No one has ever pushed for him. And he has never felt like he could be himself and be honest about what he is...until Liz.

“I want to know you,” he says, wiping a tear away. “I want you to know me. And I don’t want to be ashamed of that anymore.”

“Okay,” Liz says, stepping forward. She carefully takes the pads off his chest and turns the machine off. Taking his hand, Liz leads Max to her room and closes the door behind him. She gestures to the bed and waits for him to sit.

Liz takes a deep breath and then removes her shirt chucking it to the side. She smiles at Max’s surprise and the flush that graces his cheeks. Standing in the vee of his legs, Liz places Max’s hand over her heart.

“I want you to know me, too,” she says. “Let’s see if the bond you form when you heal goes both ways.”

“You’re not hurt though.”

She shrugs. “I got a paper cut earlier. Hurts like a mother.”

Max laughs, his head dips with it. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Very,” Liz says. “I’m also in pain.” She straddles his legs. “Can you heal me, Max?”

The lights flicker on once, twice, and then they’re off again. 

“Yeah,” Max swallows. “I can--I can heal you, Liz.”

“Can you talk me through it?”

He nods before letting his eyes slip closed. 

“When I’m healing,” Max starts. “I concentrate on the injury. It’s easier when I’m touching the wound, but I don’t have to touch it. I just have to find the pain. I follow what hurts to the source.”

“And when you find it, your hand glows?”

“Yes,” Max says, brows furrowed. “Your paper cut is on your ring finger. I just have to...there.”

“All better,” Liz says, awed.

“All better,” Max repeats.

Liz looks down at Max’s glowing hand. “When you’re healing does it feel like you’re sewing something torn back together?”

“In a way. But it’s more like fixing something that was broken. Making it whole again.”

“And all you do is concentrate on what you want?”

He nods. “Pretty much.”

“Okay,” Liz says and then she closes her eyes. 

Confused, Max asks, “What are you doing?”

“Concentrating.”

“On?”

“The pain in you,” she says.

“Liz--”

She shushes him. “I’m concentrating.”

Max quiets. Liz is the most beautiful--he gasps. His heart skips a beat and then suddenly he’s flooded with warmth. Breathing is easier. He feels lighter. There’s a pleasant hum in his ears followed by Liz’s laughter, but she isn’t laughing. There’s the barest hint of a smile on her face, and her eyes are still closed. The lights flash and they glow so bright they’re blinding, and he’s sucked into a memory.

He can see his profile as he stares up at the cross. Searching as always. Max has the strangest sensation of calling his own name, but it’s Liz’s voice he hears. He sees himself turn, sees his eyes light up. But he feels happy. Joyous even like he’s fighting a smile he has no hope of containing. But these aren’t his feelings. They’re Liz’s. He remembers her excitement. The way glee lit her face, and how she almost seemed incapable of standing still. As if she wanted to spirit them both away so she could be as carefree and loud with her discovery as she wanted to be.

“Max, I want to show you something.” She’d said it rushed and...delighted. Liz had been delighted and it was over him.

When Max opens his eyes Liz is smiling at him. A wide, beatific smile.

"It worked," she says, pulling him into a hug. "It worked."

In Liz’s embrace, Max feels what he’d been missing slot into place like a puzzle piece. And when she pulls back, smile radiant on her face, he knows that missing piece was love. 

_ God _ , he prays, pushing Liz’s hair out of her face.  _ I have been your faithful servant. It is in your name that I have done all things. You are my shepherd, but I have wanted and without her I will want for the rest of my days. So, I lay down my burden. I cast away fear and doubt. And I ask that You protect her that You hold her in Your hand. She does not believe, and my faith remains in question, but in this I shall not waver. If this is the only prayer of mine You answer then I ask that You keep her safe that You keep her whole, and that You help her sister find what she is looking for in herself and in the world. _

Liz leans forward and kisses Max. 

_ Amen _ .

\---

Max takes one last look at the church in the Sun’s glory. Light reflects off its stained glass windows, the brass fixtures gleam warm in the light. He takes a deep breath and nods. Firm in his decision. When he turns around, he sees Liz’s smiling face as she ascends the stairs to meet him.

“Ready,” she asks, hand stretched toward him.

“Yes,” Max says entwining their fingers. 

Over the last two weeks they have been practically inseparable since Liz laid him down and showed him that love could be as healing as his hands. They’d talked throughout. Asking each other if each touch was okay. If it was fine to skim their fingers across sensitive skin, to leave kisses in offering on each other’s chest. Being with Liz that morning had been joyous. He’d never connected with anyone that way, and he’d discovered his new favorite sound: her hushed whisper of his name reverent, repeating over and over again as they moved together.

The memory of the taste of her brings a smile to his lips, makes his mouth water a bit. Max thought he’d stop wanting after letting Liz into his heart, but he hasn’t. He doesn’t think he ever will, and he’s fine with that as long as he gets to have her however she wants whenever she wants.

Liz returns Max’s smile, knowing. She stands on tip-toe and kisses him, throwing her arms around his shoulder and pulling him close. When the kiss ends, she leans her forehead against his and sighs, happy.

“Come on,” Liz says, biting into her lip. “Rosa’s waiting for us at the gallery, and I’d rather not get another earful from Sister Hanagan about leading you away from the Lord.”

“You can’t lead me where I don’t wish to follow,” Max says, rubbing his nose against hers.

Liz hums. “And where is that?”

“Wherever you go,” Max says, kissing her one more time before taking her hand and stepping out into the mid-morning pedestrian traffic. 

The Sun peeks from the top ridges of the church, shining down on both of them as they walk, hands clasped and hearts full.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Happy New Year, Michelle!


End file.
